Sheikh Zayed Book Award Announces 2026 Winners
APRIL 17, 2026 — Organizers at the Sheikh Zayed Book Award (SZBA) today announced their 2026 winners across ten categories: Literature, Children’s Literature, Young Author, Literary and Art Criticism, Translation, Manuscripts, Encyclopaedias and Lexicons, Contribution to the Development of Nations, Arab Culture in Other Languages, Publishing and Technology, and Cultural Personality of the Year.
In the Literature category, the award went to Egyptian novelist Ashraf Elashmawy’s Born in the Zoo (Al Dar Al Masriah Al Lubnaniah, 2024). In the dark speculative satire, two young people, desperate to find housing, end up living inside a lion’s cage. The situation becomes fodder for a corrupt director and sensationalist media, who transform it into a national spectacle to divert public attention from rampant corruption. Through the eyes of a veterinarian and a journalist, the novel “exposes manipulation, the decay of integrity, and a society fed on illusions.”
SZBA organizers write that the novel “is built on precise daily details that transform into carriers of collective memory, balancing a subtle historical sense with disciplined artistic imagination.”
The Translation category winner was ArabLit contributor Nawal Nasrallah, who won for her translation Smorgasbords of Andalusi and Maghribi Dishes and Their Salutary Benefits (Brill, 2025). Organizers write: “This 13th-century text on food literature long remained hostage to the complexities of its manuscripts. The translator presented a comprehensive scientific work not limited to linguistic transfer; she relied on a critical editing of several manuscript copies, addressing their variations with a precise philological method while preserving terminology specific to food culture and preparations, along with its broader cultural, medical, and material contexts. Through this effort, she revived a problematic heritage text and made it accessible to the global reader in a robust scientific format combining fidelity and clarity.”
Other winners include Mustapha Rajouane (Young Author, for Plots and Characters: A Rhetorical Argumentative Approach to the Arabic Novel); Zuhair Tawfiq (Literary and Art Criticism, for Perceiving the World: Mutual Stereotypes Between the Self and the Other); Stefan Weidner (Arab Culture in Other Languages for Der arabische Diwan: Die schönsten Gedichte aus vorislamischer Zeit); the Emirates Literature Foundation (Publishing and Technology); Mohamed Elkhosht (Manuscripts, Encyclopaedias and Lexicons); and Nagat Al Saghira (Cultural Personality of the Year).
Winners across all categories of the award are usually honored at the Abu Dhabi Book Fair; just as the fair has been indefinitely postponed, the ceremony also has not been announced. The winner of the Cultural Personality of the Year award receives a prize of AED1 million, while winners in other categories receive AED750,000, or around $200,000USD.
Also read:
The press release at the SZBA website
Ashraf el-Ashmawi on finding meaning in the absurdity of existence
Between Literature, Power, Censorship, An interview with Ashraf El-Ashmawi
April 17, 2026 @ 3:48 pm
Congratulations to ArabLit for having one of its regular contributors winning a major prize for translation. ArabLit contributions to Arab and world cultures is not only extensive, but also distinct in quality. More and wider recognition of this cherished collective will only become more frequent and evident.